feedback please New energy ideas

[Chthonicone]

1 hour ago, StarSquid said:

I think the easiest solution would be to scale it down. Reduce the power produced, reduce the flow rate, keep the size on the large end. In the beginning of the game, where getting more space is as easy as digging out a few more tiles but getting power means wasting dupe time on treadmills or filling the base with CO2, it's an astonishingly practical source of power. But later on, the space you'd use to make the thing could be used for a whole variety of more useful things, so while you could power your base on a bank of fifty escher-wheels, or a vast cascade of waterwheels beneath your polluted water vent, you could also power it with a single room with some natural gas generators. Basically, make it resource-efficient but highly space-inefficient.

Scale it down more? It already requires 5 tons of water (not 5 kg but 5 tons) per second to generate 60 watts. How weak do you want it?

[StarSquid]

12 hours ago, Chthonicone said:

Scale it down more? It already requires 5 tons of water (not 5 kg but 5 tons) per second to generate 60 watts. How weak do you want it?

Oh, 60 watts? That's already pretty fair. Even if it can be used to generate infinite power, the density would be incredibly low: just 4 watts per tile. Even if we can pump an arbitrarily large amount of water in using an arbitrarily small amount of machinery, that's less efficient than ranching hatches to feed coal generators, since each hatch needs eight tiles and the coal generator works out to about 70 watts per hatch.  It's also less efficient than wild arbor trees and wood burners. A wood burner produces about 34 watts per arbor tree, and each arbor tree takes only 6 tiles to grow, not counting the tile it grows on, meaning that two  All of these require dupe labor, of course, but they also require little-to-no investment of resources. And on that particular line of reasoning... a manual generator takes just 4 tiles and one duplicant, but produces 400 watts constantly. In most of my bases, that works out to a lot better than 4 watts per tile even with the infrastructure requirements. So I really don't think it would be gamebreaking with the type of density you proposed. You could lower the water requirements and it would still have an equally low power density. So yes, it would be infinite energy, but every generator gives infinite energy.

[Chthonicone]

6 hours ago, StarSquid said:

Oh, 60 watts? That's already pretty fair. Even if it can be used to generate infinite power, the density would be incredibly low: just 4 watts per tile. Even if we can pump an arbitrarily large amount of water in using an arbitrarily small amount of machinery, that's less efficient than ranching hatches to feed coal generators, since each hatch needs eight tiles and the coal generator works out to about 70 watts per hatch.  It's also less efficient than wild arbor trees and wood burners. A wood burner produces about 34 watts per arbor tree, and each arbor tree takes only 6 tiles to grow, not counting the tile it grows on, meaning that two  All of these require dupe labor, of course, but they also require little-to-no investment of resources. And on that particular line of reasoning... a manual generator takes just 4 tiles and one duplicant, but produces 400 watts constantly. In most of my bases, that works out to a lot better than 4 watts per tile even with the infrastructure requirements. So I really don't think it would be gamebreaking with the type of density you proposed. You could lower the water requirements and it would still have an equally low power density. So yes, it would be infinite energy, but every generator gives infinite energy.

Yeah, I just wanted a quick building you can throw up rather cheaply and tear down once the water has moved on. Requires a little more prep work to prepare a water fall, but you get something out of it.